Anthea Hamilton
Patrick Javault is welcoming Anthea Hamilton.
Listen to the conference on France Culture plus.
Anthea Hamilton’s installations, which are often compared to performance décor props or contemporary Kabuki sets (she designed one such for the Tate Modern Tanks), invite us into a space where art, fashion, business and physical education are forever exchanging their signs and their references. The images and development possibilities offered by them through changes in scale, and the possibility of finding archetypes of classical culture in them, lie at the heart of her way of thinking. The face of someone like Travolta, or the silhouette of a figure like Lagerfeld in the full flush of youth make it possible to compose open allegories with just a handful of accessories, fruit and plants. But rather than telling stories, Anthea Hamilton prefers to draw lines and formulate diagrams, in particular by way of these silhouettes of legs in acrylic or mdf which thus involve the viewer’s participation.
For the public space she has constructed “Aquarius”, an arch more than 7 metres/22 feet high using scaffolding, and covered with a translucent tarpaulin where a photo of a man in his underclothes is displayed. The legs of this handsome athlete who has escaped from the world of advertising are those of the arch, and the reminder of Antiquity is thus tinged with a slight confusion. Questioned about her brilliant and complex show “Sorry I’m Late” in 2012, the artist concluded: “Travolta + Kimono = Venice”. This equation, proffered out of context, could be the intriguing access to our interview this evening.
